NT News building a worldwide fan base
It is not all about crocs for Matt Williams, editor of that tabloid newspaper par excellence, the NT News | PODCAST
It is not all about crocs for Matt Williams, editor of that tabloid newspaper par excellence, the NT News.
There is a serious side to the man, who edits Darwin’s “unconventional, bold, unique and unashamedly Territorian” tabloid, to quote its own marketing material.
“I love crocodile stories and any time we have a good one I put it on the front page,” he tells The Australian’s Behind the Media podcast. “I think I am less obsessed with aliens and UFOs than some of my previous counterparts.”
Of the paper’s croc obsession, he is on firm commercial ground. “Looking over the data over several years, when we do a good crocodile story on the front page we actually sell more papers.”
Alas, if only crocodiles could take out digital subscriptions, a key focus of News Corp papers at the moment.
But the paper didn’t flinch from campaigning about child sexual abuse, and was the first News Corp paper to campaign, on the front page of course, for marriage equality during last year’s postal ballot.
But it is the paper’s crazy front pages which often gain worldwide attention, none more so than the paper’s most famous “Why I Stuck a Cracker Up My Clacker” which made the paper famous and for which then deputy editor Paul Dyer won a Walkley Award in 2012. The story ran: A man who suffered serious burns when friends lit a firecracker in his bum says he was just showing his visiting mates a Territory good time.
Just as crocs are said to outnumber people in the remote territory, which has a population of about 240,000, the NT News has attracted more than 340,000 likes on its Facebook page.
Williams tries to balance that global audience (with fans in the US and Middle East) with local readers’ needs. “It is a challenge, I won’t lie: there are some locals who don’t really like our quirkiness,” Williams says. The quirky front pages are not a daily occurrence, “because the readers will get jack of it”. He says they are “less than 1 or 2 per cent”.
“One of the frustrations of being editor of the NT News is that obviously we are very well known for our quirky and funny headlines. But the other side of the NT News which a lot of people don’t really understand is we are very passionate,’’ Williams said.
“We try to make people’s lives better in the territory because it is a very challenging place to live. It is quite remote and a long way away from other parts of Australia. But it is a great community and everyone sort of loves each other.”
That can present its own challenges. While in bigger capital cities there is more distance between journalists and whom they write about, in Darwin you can attack someone on the front page and bump into them that evening in the pub.
The paper has an average readership in print of about 45,000, according to News Corp figures, and rose to greater national prominence recently when Nine’s 60 Minutes sent reporter Charles Wooley on assignment for a recent story. He told The Australian: “I don’t remember a newsroom as happy since I was a kid. They have kept the joy alive.”
This year the cheating cricket scandal, where members of the Australian team used sandpaper to illegally shine the ball, produced a memorable, award-winning headline, Why I’ve Got Some Sticky Near My Dicky. It won the award for headline of the year at the recent News Corporation Awards.
The other award the paper won, in conjunction with Sky News, was for its Save Our Children campaign, which eventually got the attention of then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and prompted him to spend the night in remote Tennant Creek, said to be only the second prime minister to do so. After The Australian reported that a two-year-old indigenous girl had been raped in Tennant Creek, police were not going to go public with the story, as they had the perpetrator. But it was then uncovered that the family had more than 40 child protection notifications against them. Of 25,000 children in the territory, 8000 have child protection notifications against them neglect and abuse.
With Sky News, where former editor Matt Cunningham now works, the paper launched its Save Our Children campaign.
“The campaign really was just to put the government on notice and also the prime minister on notice as well. This thing’s been happening in our communities for a long time and I think due to political correctness and obviously the fallout from the initial stolen generations it’s been an issue that people haven’t wanted to talk about.”
“Malcolm Turnbull called on the day the paper ran a headline saying the prime minister did not care. The goading worked, Turnbull spoke publicly about it, visited the Territory twice since and even stayed overnight in Tennant Creek.
“Let’s be honest,” Williams says. “Of course he cared about the whole issue. That front page was just a bit of a cattle prod to him to say, ‘c’mon it’s time for you to come out and say something’.’’
Political correctness acted as a barrier, Williams firmly believes.
“Definitely, the way society is at the moment, people are a little bit scared to speak out on things that I feel strongly about because they’ll get shot down.”
For its campaign, the paper took refuge in facts. “The very strong majority of children being neglected are Aboriginal children and that is just the facts of the matter. And that is not being racist at all, that is just talking about the issue and people realise that the kids are suffering and that we need to do something about it.”
Williams was the first News Corp editor in the country to campaign in favour of the same sex marriage vote before any of his colleagues. About 80 per cent of readers in an online poll said they supported same sex marriage. (The final vote was 60.6 per cent)
“At the time no other newspaper had been as bold as to actually put it on the front page and say let’s make it happen. We just took the punt. That front page was shared on social media, Twitter, Facebook, and it reached about 2.8 million people right around the country and around the world. So it was a phenomenal, phenomenal result. And Why I’ve Got Some Sticky Near My Dicky reached three million, right? That just topped same sex marriage.’’
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